Tell Me One Thing

by Deena Goldstone

  “This is a brood frame,” Max tells Maggie as he points to the five-sided wax structure the bees have built across the wooden border. “All the way through it, there are baby bees in different stages of growing up. They start out as eggs.…” and Max points to some tiny white cylinders, no bigger than the eye of a needle, attached to the walls of some of the cells, one egg per cell.

  “And then the eggs turn into larvae.” And here he points to some bigger creatures, translucent white and curved like a C. They are embryonic and grublike.

  “Icky,” Maggie says.

  “Yes, icky,” Max agrees.

  Then Max points to some cells that have been sealed with wax caps. “And in there are the pupae.”

  Maggie is fascinated. Max can see it on her face, and he’s glad he’s able to show her this. He knows from what Bernadette has told him that Lucia and Maggie have a hard road ahead of them.

  “It’s called metamorphosis,” Max tells her. “That’s a big word, but what it means is to change.”

  Gently he takes the tip of a knife and peels away the wax cap from a pupa cell. “Here,” he says, “take a look.” Maggie peers inside to see an organism, also very white, with an enormous dark eye and incipient tendril-like legs and antennae. “This pupa will come out of its cell only when it has changed into a beautiful bee. It has to do this—to change three times—until it’s finally where it’s supposed to be,” Max explains to her, and Maggie looks at him and nods. He has the uncanny feeling that she knows what he’s trying to tell her.

  BECAUSE IT’S JUNE AND THE OFFICIAL start of summer isn’t far off, the days are long. Even though it’s after eight o’clock as Lucia and Maggie climb the stairs to their apartment, it’s not quite dark. There’s a breeze and the tangy smell of the ocean and a few stars poking out through the nighttime overcast that is as much a part of the beach communities as the bright, sunny afternoons.

  Lucia opens the door to their new home, turns on the light, and deposits her purse and their two duffel bags at her feet. Maggie takes off her backpack, which contains Raymond, her stuffed dachshund, and five favorite books Lucia said she could bring. And then the two of them stand just inside the door and look at where they’ve landed. The living room is small and takes up the front of the apartment. From the many windows, Lucia can see Max’s backyard and the main house. Their kitchen is directly behind the living room and contains a tiny table, just big enough for the two of them.

  Some of the furniture Lucia recognizes from Bernadette’s house in Riverside—the blue denim couch with yellow piping, the flowered area rug underneath the coffee table. Bernadette’s decorating is an extension of her gardening, primary colors and flowered patterns wherever possible. It’s not Lucia’s style, she much prefers a more neutral approach, but its exuberance makes her smile. It’s why she adores Bernadette so much—her willingness to always dive headfirst into anything at all.

  Maybe this is an appropriate place for them to have landed, Lucia thinks, because here they are, she and Maggie, diving headlong into whatever comes.

  “Shall we go see the bedroom?” And Lucia takes Maggie’s hand and they move down the narrow hallway and into the back of the apartment.

  “Well,” Lucia says as they stand in the doorway surveying the small room. Like the living room, it has three good-size windows along the outside wall. “It faces west, so maybe we can see the ocean from here.”

  They walk to the windows, but no luck—there are far too many buildings between where they stand and the Pacific Ocean for them to see it. Everything at the beach is so densely packed, each square foot of land so valuable, that they look out on a jumble of roofs and apartment buildings and telephone poles and wires and a few tall old palm trees that sway in the breeze, their fronds rustling in the night air like tiny mouse feet along a wooden floor.

  A double bed takes up most of the space in the room. “We’re going to have to share a bed, sweetheart. Okay?”

  Maggie’s face lights up—this part of the arrangements she likes. She can have her mother with her all night. And she manages to say softly, “We can cuddle.”

  “Yes!” Lucia says, grateful that Maggie has seen some positive in this exile she’s arranged for them. “Every night.”

  “Until our visit is over” is said even more softly, but Lucia has heard her. There’s a minute while she looks around the small room and decides what to say. Finally, she chooses the most comforting words she can honestly employ. “Yes,” Lucia says, “until our visit is over.”

  RICHARD CALLS AGAIN. He’s been hitting redial every ten minutes from the moment he found Lucia’s note until now, more than two hours later. Suddenly, on the next try his call goes directly to voice mail. Lucia has turned off her phone. It’s clear she has seen his many messages and made the decision to turn it off. All right, he gets it; she doesn’t want to speak with him. So he’ll have to figure out another way to find her.

  He brings up his list of contacts, starts with the A’s, and begins to call every person on it who ever met Lucia. He leaves off his colleagues from the lab who only know of her, but calls everyone whom Lucia might have met and certainly everyone who knew her, however well. That means explaining to each that she’s left him, but he doesn’t care. She’s obviously had some kind of breakdown—her note made no sense to him. He needs to find her and bring her home.

  AS MAGGIE SLEEPS IN THE BEDROOM, Lucia sits on the blue denim couch in the living room, scrolling down the seemingly endless list of calls Richard has made in the hours they’ve been gone. It panics her to see how relentless he’s been, but she can’t think about all that now. For the moment, he has no idea where she is. For the moment, she and Maggie are safe. When he calms down, she’ll talk to him, she tells herself. She knows Richard; he wouldn’t be able to hear a word out of her mouth right now. He’d just talk nonstop, making his case that she come home. If she has any chance at all of having him understand why she left, she’ll have to wait.

  She turns the light off in the living room but doesn’t move. This is the first quiet moment she’s had all day to consider what she’s done, and the thrill of it all has receded and she’s plainly terrified. Even though she shed her Catholic beliefs somewhere in the middle of college, she finds herself whispering in the dark room, “God help me.” It’s not clear to her to whom she’s pleading, but it is very clear, as she sits in this unfamiliar room with nothing but uncertainty in front of her, that she is going to need a lot of help.

  And so she gets up and moves silently to where the help is—to the bedroom, to Maggie. Her daughter will give her the strength she’ll need. Lucia slips into bed beside Maggie, curving her body around the child’s warm limbs, enclosing her smaller body with her own.

  “Mommy?”

  “Yes, sweetheart, go back to sleep.”

  But Maggie doesn’t. She turns around so that she’s looking at her mother, their faces inches apart. And then Maggie takes a small, warm hand and traces the planes and angles of her mother’s face. Lucia closes her eyes and lets her do it. The language of touch. Lucia understands intuitively that Maggie is making sure she’s there, that in the midst of all the upheaval, she is still the same. And she waits while tiny fingers flutter down her jawline and slide across the curve of her full bottom lip, Maggie honing one skill, touch, as she prepares to give up another, speech.

  IT IS THE NEXT DAY THAT MAGGIE stops speaking entirely. It isn’t a conscious decision. Maggie does not wake up and tell herself—Today I won’t say a word. She just slips into it.

  The day starts with Bernadette knocking on the door early in the morning. Both Lucia and Maggie are still asleep, but Lucia slips quickly out of bed and pads into the living room.

  “Off to school, lovey, we’ve got finals to give.” She hands Lucia a wicker basket. “Blueberry muffins for breakfast.”

  “Oh, Detta, you don’t have to worry about feeding us, too.”

  “Just this morning—there’s not much in the kitchen.”

&n
bsp; “I’ll do a shopping.”

  “There’s a Vons about five blocks down, turn right on Lincoln. There’s coffee right beside the stove and a French press on the counter.”

  Lucia puts a hand on Bernadette’s forearm and says quietly, “You’ve saved my life.”

  “You’d better do that yourself,” Bernadette answers, her voice light to take the sting off the imperative.

  Lucia brings the basket of muffins back to bed and climbs in beside Maggie.

  “Yummm, they smell good, don’t they?”

  Maggie holds out her hand and Lucia gives her one and oh, they’re still warm! Mother and daughter lean back against the headboard and eat their muffins in companionable silence. Breakfast in bed, something Lucia would never have let Maggie do at home.

  When the muffins are finished, Lucia needs her coffee, so Maggie follows her into the kitchen to watch her grind the beans and pour the boiling water into the French press. And here, too, Maggie doesn’t need to say anything, because Lucia talks the whole time about all the fun things they’ll be able to do now that they’re there and how much better the weather will be and how they’ll wake up each morning and figure out each day.

  Then, instead of going grocery shopping, they go to the beach.

  THE BEACH IS WINDY AND OVERCAST and Maggie has to wear a sweatshirt over her red bathing suit. But because it’s early in the morning and because it isn’t officially summer yet, they have the sand mostly to themselves.

  Lucia takes an old blanket out of the trunk of her car along with a sand bucket, a shovel, and some plastic cups that always come out when they go to the beach, and they make their way to the waterline.

  On the blanket, from several feet away, Lucia watches her daughter dig a hole, each shovelful carefully lifted out and the remaining sand patted in place, Maggie humming softly to herself as she works. And then suddenly it’s as if something heavy, something Lucia’s been carrying, slips from her grasp and she is overwhelmed with exhaustion. Now that they’re here, now that they’ve made it to Bernadette’s, she has no idea how to take the next step. Rationally, logically, she knows what to do—find a job, find an apartment, find a school for Maggie for the fall. But how to do all that? She’s never been on her own, not really. Living in the dorms at Oberlin doesn’t count. And then she met Richard and they began living together and the next eight years were spent listening to what he set out for them and agreeing.

  “Maggie,” Lucia calls out, “what are you building?”

  Maggie looks up at her mother, frowns, shrugs her tiny shoulders, and goes back to her digging.

  “Is it a swimming pool or a lake?”

  Maggie turns around but doesn’t answer.

  “A bowl for spaghetti or a birdbath for the seagulls?”

  This time Maggie doesn’t even turn around. And Lucia gets up and walks to where her daughter kneels on the sand, deeply focused on the job in front of her, working carefully, in a rhythm.

  Lucia sits beside her child and puts a hand on her small back. “Will you tell me what you’re making?” Maggie shakes her head. “Because …?” Lucia leaves the question open-ended, but Maggie doesn’t bite.

  Lucia takes a minute, looks out to the water, allows the waves to lull her into a slower rhythm. Take notice of what’s in front of you, she reminds herself. Watch. She knows her child well enough to know she’s upset. Well, why wouldn’t she be? She needs more of an explanation.

  “I love you with all my heart,” she begins again. Maggie doesn’t look at her, simply continues digging and patting. “And I know Daddy does, too. But when Daddy and I live in the same house, that doesn’t make me happy anymore. And I know that you’re happier when we’re all together and that’s what makes all this so much harder.”

  She waits to see how Maggie will react to what she’s just said, but there’s no change in her expression or body language.

  Lucia sighs, thinks of what to say next, and then, “You must have some questions. You can ask me and I will tell you as much as I know.” There’s silence. “Maggie?” And her daughter looks up, her dark eyes clear and present, but that’s all. No question follows and Lucia is getting annoyed.

  “Maggie, I know you must have at least one question.”

  The child goes back to her digging.

  “Oh, so today you’re not talking. Is this a game?”

  Maggie shakes her head, a tiny shake without looking at her mother.

  Lucia backs off. Okay, she won’t push. If this is what Maggie needs to process all the changes that she has thrust upon her, well then, Lucia can wait.

  BUT MAGGIE DOESN’T TALK THE NEXT DAY and the day after that, and Lucia spends those days watching her intently. Suddenly there’s nothing casual or easy about her interaction with her daughter. Now she must pay close attention at all times because Maggie volunteers nothing and will answer only with a shake or nod of her head.

  Bernadette, who has never had children, tells her to give it a while. Max, who has two grown boys, agrees.

  “Children go through phases,” he tells Lucia on Sunday night as they sit in the backyard, late, Maggie asleep upstairs in the apartment, Bernadette and Lucia sharing a bottle of wine, Max drinking a beer.

  He tells her about Noah, his youngest, who wouldn’t eat anything that wasn’t white for, oh, it must have been about two years. Pasta, butter, white bread, ranch dressing, potatoes—that was about it.

  “What did you do?” Lucia asks him. “Weren’t you frantic?”

  Max shakes his head. “Our pediatrician said not to make a big deal about it. He was of the school that believes kids know what they need better than we do.”

  “Do you buy that?” Lucia asks him.

  “Not really, but I didn’t have a better answer. What was I going to do, hold him down and force-feed him?”

  “And Janie, their mother, had just died,” Bernadette adds to bring some context into the conversation.

  “Oh, I didn’t know.…” Lucia says quietly. “That must have been such a difficult time.”

  “Yes, that’s why I’m telling you,” he says. “Children find their own way of dealing with difficult times.”

  “She’s not being willful,” Lucia says, needing validation.

  “Of course not,” Bernadette agrees.

  “She’s waiting.” This last judgment from Max.

  AFTER LUCIA GOES UP TO BED and curves her body around her sleeping child, Bernadette and Max remain in the yard, talking in whispers.

  “Did you tell her Richard’s been calling?” Max asks.

  “No. I thought about it, but no.”

  “Do you think he believes you—that you don’t know where she is?”

  “I don’t know. I told him we don’t have any room for them, that you have a small house. Luckily, he’s never been here to see that.” And she gestures toward the garage apartment, then puts her feet up on the chair Lucia vacated and changes her tack. “A lot of us do what Lucia did.”

  Max looks at her, puzzled.

  “Oh, you know, commit to a starter marriage for all the wrong reasons.”

  “Such as?”

  “Lucia had no idea what to do with herself after graduation, so she followed Richard out here. Problem solved.” Bernadette sighs. “And a new one created. No one knows what they truly want when they’re eighteen or twenty-two or even twenty-five.”

  “Speak for yourself.”

  “Okay, I was completely clueless.” And then Bernadette reads Max’s face. “But not you and Janie.”

  “No.”

  A moment and then Bernadette says, “And that made her death so much harder.”

  Max takes her hand, grateful she isn’t jealous. “We need to stay out of this mess, Detta.”

  “I know,” Bernadette agrees, but without much conviction in her voice.

  IT’S SUNDAY NIGHT OF THE WEEK Lucia left, and Richard hasn’t slept more than a few hours since the Thursday evening he came home to find the apartment empty. He’s started
smoking again, something he gave up when he started graduate school and began running. Now he sits at the kitchen table, Lucia’s note permanently in front of him, unaware that he’s rocking slightly back and forth as he smokes one cigarette after another. The ashtray overflows. He’s staring at his laptop screen, trying to craft the perfect e-mail, the one that will bring her back. So far he has written, “I love you,” and nothing else.

  He deletes it. That’s the wrong approach, he thinks. He needs a grand gesture, something that will wake her up, something that will make her see just how much he loves her. It seems an impossibility to get that into an e-mail. His heart is bursting with love for her. How can she be throwing all that away?

  IT’S BEEN EXACTLY A WEEK SINCE Maggie stopped talking, a week in which Maggie and Lucia have spent every hour of every day together. And without consciously planning it, Lucia has stopped expecting Maggie to speak and has begun to speak for her. If asked, Lucia would have said that she was taking the pressure off her daughter, not demanding something—speech—that Maggie wasn’t ready to give.

  But what Bernadette sees as she watches them together is that already, in a week, any separation between mother and child has evaporated. Lucia reads Maggie’s sighs and translates those into wants. She studies Maggie’s shrugs and facial expressions and immediately knows, or thinks she does, when Maggie’s anxious, or bored, or needy, all without a word being spoken.

  Bernadette can see these two dark-haired and spritelike creatures begin to spin their own communication, to build a universe of only two. It feels so intimate that sometimes Bernadette has to turn away, as if she’s witnessing something too private to be shared.

  The only time Maggie leaves Lucia’s side is when she goes to visit the bees with Max. And in those few minutes, on those nights when the four of them eat together or get together after dinner for coffee and homemade cookies in the backyard, it is then that Bernadette has an opportunity to talk to Lucia. But what to say—Are you sure it’s good for Maggie to spend so much time with you? How can Bernadette say that to any mother, especially since she’s raised no children of her own? No, it seems she must watch this drama play out from the sidelines. She must observe a child attach herself to her mother and begin to grow into her flesh. And say nothing.